In a world where nearly 20 people are forcibly displaced every minute by violence, war and persecution ARE WE KIDDING OURSELVES TO THINK THAT TECHNOLOGY WILL SOLVE THE WORLD PROBLEMS.
One in every 113 people on the planet is now a refugee AND THAT IS WITHOUT CLIMATE CHANGE THAT IS GOING TO BE THE BIGGEST MOTIVE TO BECOME ONE.
At the moment ( According to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR) it might be true to say that out of the 65.6 million 40.3 million – are people displaced within their own country.
Here are below are four UNHCR videos that should be shown on World TV, across Social Media, in every school to every man woman and child.
( A twenty-minute read if you want a world worth living in)
Most of us were taught that poverty started with the Industrial Revolution.
For the most part this is true but it did not happen in the isolation of the British Empire.
This story is powerful in its simplicity but if we rewind to about 1500 people living in South America, India, and Asia were much better off than Europeans. In fact Europe was just emerging from the dark ages.
China and India controlled most if not nearly all the world economy.
The Question is how did this change and why?
I put it down to Christopher Columbus and shoddy geographical calculations.
On his second outing in the Caribbean he was looking for gold and as a result the Spanish invasion killed must of the islands inhabitants. Then came a bloke named Cortes who ripped off the Aztec of Mexico,followed by Pizarro yet another Spanish conquistador with an unquenchable thirst for gold.
A total of over 185,000 kilograms of gold and 100 million kilograms of silver were pilfer from Latin America and pumped into Spain and then used to pay for Spanish war and debts.
(A 100 million kilograms of silver invested back then @ 5% would amount to $165 trillion to-day. More than double the world’s total GDP to-day)
This wealth allowed Europe to grow its economic wealth beyond the China or India.
The result was Europeans outsourced its labour into wars and colonization reducing the population of the rest of the world by slavery, epidemic diseases and massacres while enjoying the rich life.
( Free Slavery labour benefited the USA Colonies by over 222.5 million hours) Britain pay compensation of over £20m to slave owners equivalent to £300 million to-day which tell us nothing of the total value they produced.
The Silver was turned into cotton and sugar and spices. Cotton being the key raw material for the European Industrial Revolution.
The Surviving slaves got nothing.
Indeed without the slave colonies of the New world there would have being no market for the Industrial goods.
You could say that the above is rather a simplistic explanation but development in Africa and Latin America was effectively stolen by Europe.
So where are we to-day.
Almost half the world — over 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day.
The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the 41 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (567 million people) is less than the wealth of the world’s 7 richest people combined.
Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.
Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen.
1 billion children live in poverty (1 in 2 children in the world). 640 million live without adequate shelter, 400 million have no access to safe water, 270 million have no access to health services. 10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the age of 5 (or roughly 29,000 children per day).
Poverty is the state for the majority of the world’s people and nations. Why is this?
Behind the increasing interconnectedness promised by globalization and technology are global decisions, policies, and practices.
Formulated by the rich and powerful.
These can be leaders of rich countries or other global actors such as multinational corporations, institutions, and influential people.
As a result, in the global context, a few get wealthy while the majority struggle.
The poorest are also typically marginalized from society and have little representation or voice in public and political debates, making it even harder to escape poverty.
The amount the world spends on military, financial bailouts and other areas that benefit the wealthy, compared to the amount spent to address the daily crisis of poverty and related problems are often staggering.
To attract investment, poor countries enter a spiraling race to the bottom to see who can provide lower standards, reduced wages and cheaper resources.
This has increased poverty and inequality for most people. It also forms a backbone to what we today call globalization. As a result, it maintains the historic unequal rules of trade.
Now we are looking at a new form of Poverty currently being created by a few monopolies. I call it Algorithm Poverty.
Around the world, in rich or poor nations, poverty has always been present. In most nations today, inequality—the gap between the rich and the poor—is quite high and often widening.
The causes are numerous, including a lack of individual responsibility, bad government policy, exploitation by people and businesses with power and influence, or some combination of these and other factors.
Inequality will affect social cohesion and lead to problems such as increasing crime and violence. Almost half the world—over three billion people—live on less than $2.50 a day and at least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day:
And we wonder why the world is in a state of chaos.
Around 21,000 children die every day around the world. World hunger is a terrible symptom of world poverty.
Food aid (when not for emergency relief) can actually be very destructive on the economy of the recipient nation.
Free, subsidized, or cheap food, below market prices undercuts local farmers, who cannot compete and are driven out of jobs and into poverty, further slanting the market share of the larger producers such as those from the US and Europe.
Poverty leads to hunger. There are many inter-related issues causing hunger. They include land rights and ownership, diversion of land use to non-productive use, increasing emphasis on export-oriented agriculture, inefficient agricultural practices, war, famine, drought, over-fishing, poor crop yields, etc.
Solving world hunger in the conventional sense (of providing/growing more food etc) will not tackle poverty that leads to hunger in the first place.
Further, there is a risk of continuing the poverty and dependency without realizing it, because the act of attempting to provide more food etc can appear so altruistic in motive.
To solve world hunger in the long run, poverty alleviation is required.
For the first time in our history Technology offers us a chance to distribute the world’s wealth fairly.
Without Trade agreements, Aid, Repayment, Corruption, Power Brokering by NGOs, United Nations Begging, Bureaucratic interference, or any other hidden agendas.
It could be both implemented and funded by the very Algorithms that are going to spread poverty. ( See previous Posts)
It requires the large capitalist monopoly platforms to supply a free basic mobile phone to every person register as citizen of a country world-wide.
On registration the people would be allocated a pin number.
This pin would allow them to access a monthly Basic non repayable no strings attached Income payment.
There is no other way of ensuring that our world can fight poverty and climate change.
Most of the causes of hunger are found in global politics.
People are hungry not because the population is growing so fast that food is becoming scarce, but because people cannot afford it.
The number of people overweight or obese is now rivaling the number of people suffering from hunger around the world.
Its time to get off our fat asses and share our wealth not push it around to create more wealth.
If you want a world worth something in the future now is the time to start creating it. Solve World Poverty once and
For all.
It can be done with the press of a button.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
I have posted on this subject before with little reaction.
There is often an implicit connection between discourses of the future and notions of technology, so that if we see a television programme with a title such as Click or Tomorrow’s World we expect that the topic will be technology.
The single most astonishing point about technologies is that they can move from being emblematic of an almost unreachable future to becoming so taken for granted that it feels like a personal slight when they do not work.
In this way technology in and of itself becomes a symbol of being modern is one of the reasons it becomes expressive of, rather than distinct from, cultural values.
Perhaps this is the reason that the relationship between social media and the conceptualisation of the future is still blurred and will remain so.
New technology does not just change the manner in which people go about their everyday lives: It also facilitates our imagination of the future.
All the above speak to a new, imagined future that strives towards idealism. However within the vast field of technology the consequences of AI there are a few devices and algorithms that will battle it out over the next twenty odd years for supremacy.
Will it be Smartphones, or Smart Wearable or Cryptocurrency that will augment reality.
All need software in the form of algorithms to run.
AI algorithms will make the physical and digital world interchangeable.
Practically every non- iPhone smartphone relies on an Android operating system?
One way or the other we are entering an age where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away.
Not surprising.
So it’s not Social media technology platforms like Facebook or Twitter and the others ( that talks a lot about connectivity but not accountability) that will change the world but the power of ever where at once.
That requires total knowledge on all aspects of life.
Google or should I say the Google Cloud is trying to achieve this.
Which is possibly both the best and the worst thing that could happen.
So let’s look at a few of the top combats in the world of technology in no particular order.
( Obviously it would take page after page to give a comprehensive insight so I am only going to give a few lines to each.)
Microsoft Corporation:(LinkedIn -Skype – Mojang – Yammer- Hotmail)
It operates through the following segments:
Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing.
Market Cap As of May 2017
$507.5 Billion
Microsoft could be worth $1 trillion by 2020 — if not sooner. It is moving further and further into a digital landscape for everything from movies, music, books, games and software.
Twitter: Owned mostly by Venture Capitalist:
An online breaking news and social networking service. Using Twitter bots, (live streaming video.) With 450 million monthly active users it is ranked the eleventh most visited website. It has mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows 10, Windows Phone,BlackBerry, and Nokia S40.
Capable of influencing public opinion about culture, products and political agendas by automatically generating mass amounts of tweets through imitating human communication. World leaders and their diplomats have taken note of Twitter’s rapid expansion and have been increasingly utilizing Twitter diplomacy. Television programs use it to amplify their programs.
It could become the emergency communication system for track epidemics or sensor for automatic response to natural disasters.
Amazon:
The largest Internet retailer in the world. The company is now worth more than $560 billion. Electronic commerce and cloud computing company.
Amazon announced that it would acquire Whole Foods, a high-end supermarket chain with over 400 stores, for $13.4 billion.
eBay Inc: (PayPal)
There are now literally millions of items bought and sold every day on eBay, all over the world. For every $100 spent online worldwide, it is estimated that $14 is spent on eBay. What’s more, eBay doesn’t care who you are, where you live, or what you look like:
The race is on to control mobile payments and the upside remains enormous:
Apple:(Shazam – Emagic- Siri – Beats Electronics – Next Inc.- Novauris-PrimeSense -The Bottom Line – Invest in Yourself.)
Quarterly revenue of $52.6 billion 2017.
Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV. Apple’s four software platforms — iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS.
Facebook:(Whats App and Instagram Oculus VR.)
A publicly traded company worth more than $500 billion.
More than two billion monthly users. It is developing a new social platform in virtual reality called Facebook Spaces, which it believes will form the foundation for the future of communication.
Tencent and Alibaba: aren’t far from the half-trillion dollar mark either.
These are the main contenders as we know them to-day
—————————————————————————————
So the Question is:
Which one if any of the above will be the top dog by 2025.
Will it be : ( All knowledge, All Gossip, All purchases, All Apps/ Software)
At this point you will have noticed that I have left out the company mentioned in Title of this posting.
While in the future devices may be more ubiquitous in all corners
of the globe, inequality will therefore remain in terms of the services
available in certain locations and the lack of attention paid to the needs
and desires of certain populations.
Companies like Amazon and Google will be fighting to lock you into one voice ecosystem. You may have to declare your allegiance for Alexa, Siri, Cortana or Google Assistant.
One could say that:
Amazon represents de-socialising of commerce. Face book represents self ego. Twitter represents myths and gossip. Apple represents profit. E bay represents selling and buying of stuff, Google represents doming down.
All are represented on Social Media which is being used in ways that shape politics, business, world culture, education, careers, innovation, and more.
Social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have increasingly been adopted by politicians, political activists and social movements as a means to engage, organize and communicate with citizens.
So is the power and the winner going to be Social Media which is owned by the Internet.
I think Not.
In short, one consequence of this prediction is that the very idea of ‘social media’ might gradually disappear; instead we simply have an increasingly diverse set of media and increasingly sophisticated exploitation of the possibilities these media have created, including other trends such as obtaining information, sharing information or making communication more visual.
Social media is slowly killing real activism and replacing it with ‘slacktivism, and we all know where that might lead us. Awareness is not translating into real change. Support is limited to pressing the ‘Like’ button or sharing content which absolve them from responsibility to act.
The role of social media as symbolic of the future may already be in decline.
“The election of Donald J. Trump is perhaps the starkest illustration yet that across the planet, social networks are helping to fundamentally rewire human society.”
The one I left out, with 65% of all online searches – is Google.
Google has expanded far beyond its original claim to fame as a search engine.
Google and their competitor platforms are programming the world for profit. The reach of this technology giant is so vast it is hard to imagine an area of modern life it has not touched.
Alphabet owns Google, as well as many other companies. However, Google itself owns companies.
Google has reorganized itself into multiple companies, separating its core Internet business from several of its most ambitious projects while continuing to run all of these operations under a new umbrella company called Alphabet.
Google owns more than 200 companies, including those involved in robotics, mapping, video broadcasting, telecommunications and advertising.
Simply put, the company has been visionary in recognizing the income potential for information products.
Their profit seeking algorithms ensuring that every recommendation, from whether you should buy this or that, stay here or there, fly or drive, connect to this or that, live or die, will earn them a few cents.
By 2025 all will be connected to the Cloud. With one winner.
The Google Monopoly.
Once a Google client always a Google client.
How do you stop using Google?
Already impossible.
Move and your G Mail becomes blocked mail.
Say anything on you website that smacks about google, you site gets flooded with google ads.
It is becoming more and more difficult for anyone to extricate themselves from the clutches of any of its platforms as deactivating means little or nothing.
Social media apps ensure you are still engaged and if they don’t work your friends and family smartphones are searching for you nonstop supplying little hits of dopamine. ( Someone likes you photo or you are mentioned in their contact. It’s a social validation feedback loop..exploiting a vulnerability in humans psychology.)
Will Social Media destroy or rain back Google dominance?
The whole Social media thing is turning into an addictive cancer effecting our brains and tearing our emotions and attentiveness a sunder which in turn is encouraging self-segregation and exacerbating social divides.
Every facet of our life is touched or being integrated by the social media today.
In this sense social media has become an instrument of democratic renewal.
On the other hand it is evident that this uncensored and unmonitored medium of communication is exposing us all to a gradual breakdown of social cohesion and the destruction of our traditional value systems.
Though the advantages of social media are emphasized quite often, as opposed to its negative aspects which are very rarely discussed.
I feel that this will change in the coming years.
All said, social media is here to stay. The power of social media is exponential. Numbers tell the story.
Just as difficult as forecasting the future is knowing the present.
After all not everything moves over time to become more functional
or efficient.
It is obviously going to be hard to predict the future for something as
dynamic as social media. How can we know what social media has already become for oil workers in Alaska, tribal people in Amazonia and the nouveau riche of Moscow?
Unless we take responsibility to ensure that our understanding of social media and its impacts are constantly evaluated with what’s happening in the world. Once we appreciate that knowing social media is not an exercise in delineating the properties of a set of platforms, but rather of acknowledging what the world has already turned these into, by way of content, the immensity of the problem is revealed.
So it will be important to continue monitoring and exploring the extent to which collective action is individualised through social media use.
= Can the use of social media for campaigning help to bring about genuine and lasting empowerment; or does it serve largely to re-inforce pre-existing relationships?
= Is social media a means of building dialogue and consensus in diverse communities or does its use encourage increased fragmentation or, alternatively, a homogeneity of interests?
= Can meaningful impact measures be developed that can be used by small, under-resourced organisations at local level (or indeed within larger voluntary organisations)?
Social media is seen in much of the literature as a means of promoting dialogue beyond the mainstream media. Voluntary and community groups have been criticized, however, for using social media as little more than a means of broadcasting.
Why might this be the case – and does it matter?
Social media expands our capacity but, it does not change our
essential humanity.
It is used to repair the rupture sustained by separated transnational families or for overcoming previously frustrated desires to share photographs more easily.
It allows couples living in different countries who ‘sort of’ live together online;
Soon, however, things move on to new realms.
Should a clear relationship be expected between the (apparently empowering) use of social media in mobilizing large national and global movements, and its use at the micro-political neighborhood level.
An increasing number of social media platforms can be aligned with the diversity of the social groups to which we might want to relate.
Social media however has little impact on the overall outcomes in terms of empowerment, equalities or social justice.
However powerful and important the advent of social media has become, it would be hard to place it ahead of the impact and significance of smartphones, within which social media platforms may often be seen as just another kind of app.
It is smartphones that facilitate social media’s importance as a mix of polymedia, making clear the range of media possibilities as they lie side by side within one easily accessible device.
It is the Smartphone that drives social media input and out put.
Will that will be the One Winner, changing our sense of collective memory, creating a new form or combination of internal and external faculties for retaining information.
As Smartphones become smarter, they may well accelerate the dissolving of social media into this wider array of communicative possibilities.
The increasing ubiquity of the smart phone is the catalyst for more general usage of social media. Recognizing that this may not necessarily impact on any other aspect of inequality should not prevent us from recognizing that there is in one aspect an increasing and significant equality:
The more individuals live within culturally imposed constraints on communication, the more a new technology may mean that what was previously forbidden now becomes possible.
This fluid mix of communicative forms suits the way users flow between activities such as talking, gaming, texting, masturbating, learning and purchasing. The social connection is more important than how well a platform meets their needs.
Comparative anthropology creates particular varieties of knowledge of both breadth and depth. What makes these essential within the context of our complex modern world, however, is that these are forms of understanding based on empathy.
Merely having a smart phone provides a significant change with respect to the capacities of its owner.
——
What happens to our online materials at death.
Finally: Capitalism can never be ethical.
There are no laws requiring Google to be fair.
If we don’t open our eyes soon technology ( whether it’s Google, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon Inc or some equivalent service) is going to F—k us all from some Cloud or other that is just over the horizon.
Just look at the annual release of new smartphones.
Of course there are other things in the long tall grass waiting to caught us by the short and hairy and most have being around for yonks. War, Natural Disasters, Greed, Inequality and the like.
My advice is to beware of the man with a smartphone. Because knowledge is not knowledge until someone else knows that one knows.
Google it.
All human comments much appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
” Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth on a finite planet is either a madman or an economist” I would add technology in the form of profit seeking Algorithms.
Infinite growth might have seemed possible when Captain Cook was around, unfortunately it no longer holds.
However we are all still lead to believe that GDP marks human progress.
Our world is rapidly changing. Markedly defined by the Internet.
We are now standing on the threshold of divorce between Money and State with natural systems under enormous pressure which I am sure I don’t have to high light here.
With the planet groaning, ever trade deal is a new frontier of accumulation a form of World GDP exploitation that was and still is promoted by the help of the World Bank, and the IMF.
We are now at a stage where GDP growth is beginning to create more poverty, and inequality than it eliminates.
Unfortunately the resources of the world have been exploited both for debt and profit rather than sustainability, and as long as GDP growth remains the main objective of Globalization we will see more and more countries going into irreversible debt, and war over freshwater, air, and energy.
These profound changes are emboldened by the evident failures on both levels of political control: Technological Regulations/ Laws and the growing power of monopoly platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, the Cloud etc.
Don’t worry say’s technology we can decouple sustainability and material throughput.
A beguiling vision of a future lightweight economy.
Facebook and the Cloud are gathering an unprecedented amount of power and allowing their business practices to be a disruptive force for democracy.
All pointers signaling the widespread decay of the economic and political frameworks in which our institutions operate.
With profit seeking algorithms rich countries are in fact increasing consumption, still producing stuff and by 2030 it will be in the 100 billion tons.
There is also a growing belief as we convert to renewable energies and begin to use negative – emissions technologies that we can change the damage to the climate.
However if we continue to ignore that energy use is only part of the problem.
It is what we are doing with it is the problem.
Polluting our sea, chopping down our forests, producing cement, creating land fills with waste, eroding our land, all contributing more and more greenhouse gases. Switching to clean energy will do nothing to slow this down.
The problem is much deeper than we are willing to admit.
We need a new consciousness for a different world.
Our crucial first step would be to get rid of GDP as a measure of economic growth/progress and well-being.
We need to have an open discussion about what we really value.
We are all aware of the individual problems, but the main problem remains the same – Inequality due to the distribution and exploitation of the world’s wealth.
Any rich country that has food banks, people sleeping on the street, is for me a failed state.
I have written many a post with a solution that to date has fallen on deaf ears.
it is my conviction that at this point and time its impossible to correct the imbalances of Capitalism. We can only ensure that Capitalism pays for the damage by introducing a World Aid Commission.
0.05%
On all High Frequency trading, on all Sovereign Wealth Fund Accusations,on all Foreign exchange transactions over $50,000, on all Social Media platforms postings, on all Bitcoin’s, and other digital currency transactions.
This fund would be a perpetual source of money.
It could replace the begging Organisations.Re Establish the United Nations an effective world organisation that could address and react to world needs, where ever, when ever.
It could be managed under the UN umbrella, provided it was totally independent/ transparent of any lobbing and political veto interference.
Its funds could be granted with no repayments requirements.
It would change the world for the better, by spreading its wealth where it is needed most.
Of course the problem remains as to how we get our Capitalist Master to implement such a course of action.
Perhaps Bitcoin’s ability to promote the divorce between Money and State, might be a place to start.
All suggestions appreciated.
All human comments appreciated. All Like clicks chucked in the bin.
In Europe alone, there are 3 million people on the streets.
We all know that the Eu has many problems and is need of reform. All EU countries face major challenges in relation to finding sufficient resources to tackle social problems and it cannot be expected that one country like Germany is going to sort out other country’s homeless.
However it appears to me that homelessness is increasing across a considerable number of EU Member States.
The growing number of people in Europe facing situations of housing vulnerability due to shifting dynamics in housing and labour markets, as well as the diminishing role of states in housing provision requires policies that target different types of homelessness (temporary, long-term) with customized interventions (prevention, supported housing) that are flexible and effective at engaging individuals “where they are.”
As EU member states grapple with immigration and other social changes wrought by EU integration, globalization, and the economic crisis
We are now caught in VICIOUS circular, with the whole area in needs of a fresh approach.
Prevention of homelessness is strongest in social democratic regimes, and the weakest in Mediterranean countries and some eastern European transition nations.
Which strategies in particular are best suited to responding to homelessness, either from a preventive or remedial vantage point is debatable however the provision of housing must ultimately be seen as the primary solution to homelessness, and that, while distinct from their housing needs, the additional health and social service needs of individuals need to be addressed as well.
Housing and services should NOT be linked.
A right to housing for all homeless persons will only be successful to the extent that such a right is legally enforceable.
Another words in the hands of courts rather than in those of elected governments.
While the numbers of people experiencing homelessness may be relatively low compared to those experiencing other social problems within the EU, the unique distress of homelessness and the potential costs for individuals, families and wider society from homelessness must never be forgotten.
Quantifying homelessness isn’t straightforward and I don’t think it would be beneficial here to list the thousands that are sleeping rough in Europe, country by country.
It is sufficient to state that Homelessness is a violation of fundamental human rights. When you walk by a homeless person it personifies whether the European Union is working or not.
In total, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights estimates that the world has 100 million homeless people.
And we wonder why we have such an unstable political world.
By comparison in Australia and Canada, hundreds of thousands of people are homeless.
There are over 9.5 million homeless people in Columbia and 24.4 million in Nigeria.
The argument can be made for approaching homelessness as a problem that affects a set of distinct sub-groups and consequently, for tailoring solutions according to each group’s respective needs. Homeless youth, Homeless women Homeless migrants. Homeless mentally ill.
This places homelessness interventions squarely within the broader context of poverty.
But poverty is also the inability to use the resources offered. Poverty should be understood as not merely a problem of access to resources but also as implying a lack of ability in taking advantage of resources.
If the EU does not want social exclusion within its ranks it must address homeless with a Rooflessness subsidy, like it help the farming communities through the Common Agricultural Policy.
Homelessness in Greece has significantly increased to 20,000 homeless people in recent years.
About 50% of the homeless population roams the streets of Athens.
Measuring the scope and extent of homelessness in Europe still remains a significant obstacle along with the whole set of processes that generate homelessness and what results in different histories of homelessness.
The POOR AND HOMELESS WILL CONTINUE TO GROW, BOTH WILL UNDERMINE THE ECONOMIC GROWTH AND UNITY OF THE EU.
All comments welcome, all like clicks chucked in the bin.
